


Where Did He Go?

by OccasionalStorytelling



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hurt No Comfort, Kidnapping, No Rape Though, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Not A Fix-It, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Vomiting, bc of the torture, break-it, maybe Stockholm Syndrome?, narek can’t tell sutra and Soji apart, non con because he did not consent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24018169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OccasionalStorytelling/pseuds/OccasionalStorytelling
Summary: The last we see of Narek is when he’s dragged away by two androids. What happens to him when the show ends? Where does he go?What if Sutra freakin’ tortures him a whole bunch because she’s studying organic life forms? But what if Soji and Picard rescue him and do their best to help him recover tooREAD THE TAGS
Comments: 15
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t promise I’ll continue this, I can’t promise it would end happy 
> 
> The tense switches between past and present constantly because it’s 2am and I wrote this for me and it was not beta-d, my apologies if it bugs you

The Tan Zhekran. The impossible box. You manipulate the pieces, wait a few moments, and the secret is revealed. 

Twist. 

Narek had always been the black sheep of the family, the disgrace who couldn’t even qualify for the Zhat Vash. 

Rotate to the left. 

Narissa asked him to help her, and sent him to the Artifact to extract information from a synth. 

Twist. 

The synth was Doctor Soji Asha, and she was like nothing he’d ever seen before. 

Twist. 

She was kind. Trusting. Her ears were the wrong shape, and he knew she was the Destroyer, but there was something about her. 

Rotate upwards. 

He fell in love. He told her his true name. The name for his soulmate. 

Twist. 

He led her through the mediation and set a device to kill her. 

Twist. 

She survived. He was sent to follow her home. 

Rotate right, then twist down. 

The ship crashed on the planet surface. Somehow, he survived. He could only assume the orchid was designed to disable, rather than destroy. 

Twist. 

They came for him in the night. He couldn’t stay alert in the bitter cold. He resisted when they tried to take him. 

Twist. 

He found himself in a cell with a cut on his face. It was just the way Romulans would design it. Too thin to allow him any privacy to hide. No bed, no chair, no shelter or protection of any kind. No food or water. 

Twist. 

He could SEE his bag on the other side of the force field. 

Rotate left three times. 

He broke down sooner than he thought he would, but he was always the weak one in the family. He begged the robot watching him for water. Her response was puzzling, and did not involve providing water. Did she really expect him to believe there was no prison here? That they had never had a humanoid prisoner before, who would need food and water to survive? He wasn’t born yesterday. This is another method of getting him to break. And it’s going to work. 

Twist. 

He realized they don’t want him to break. They want him dead. 

Twist. 

Soji comes. He almost passes out. She reminds the guard not to bring him anything. She tells him she hates him. She leaves. 

Rotate diagonally and turn upwards. 

The one that looked like Soji came. 

Wait. 

She opened the cell and held her hand against his throat. His lips were dry and he could hardly feel his body. He was weak. He hoped she was ending it. 

Wait. 

She tells him her plan. She will let him go. He will do something for her. She kills the guard.

Wait. 

He makes it out of the compound alive. He finds a stream, and manages to drink. There are still rations remaining in his bag. 

Wait. 

He returns to the Artifact. His sister is there. He collects the weapons he’ll need. 

Wait. 

He goes to the ship he’d been tracking. He explains the plan, slowly, so they will understand. 

Wait. 

According to plan, Narek is dragged struggling back to the compound in handcuffs. According to plan, they set him free so he can cause the diversion. 

The box clicks as it begins to open. 

The diversion works. All eyes are on Narek, the Romulan spy everyone hates. He’s overwhelmed by the strength of two of them, and pinned to the ground. 

Click. 

He cries out to Soji one last time. The second time he’s begged in less than 24 hours. 

Click. 

He’s dragged away. 

The box opens. Inside is a secret. 

Narek has been manipulated and controlled into exactly this position: back in the torture cell, now handcuffed to the wall so he can’t even lie down. His face stings and bleeds. He knows he’s covered in other cuts. He remembers being hit on the head, and winces when that part of him hits the wall. He passes out. 

He comes to and it’s night time. The cold rouses him, but he can’t move due to the handcuffs. Within minutes, the temperature drops far enough that he wouldn’t be able to move if he was free. He can see lighting when he cracks his dry eyes open. He gasps, but there is no guard to hear it. 

He wakes. He’s still handcuffed to the wall. It’s daytime. There’s no guard. He struggles feebly. It has no effect. He notices he’s still alive, so he hopes that the others succeeded. The destroyer has not come to eliminate all organic life, and the galaxy is safe. He notices a foul taste in his mouth. It’s his own dried blood. He can’t muster the saliva to spit it out. Once more, he succumbs to the darkness of being unconscious. He hopes he won’t wake up this time. 

He wakes up in a medical lab. It is clean and white. He is lying down, strapped to a table. There’s an IV in his arm. He can only hope it’s providing food or water. He can’t muster the energy to struggle. Soji appears, but she’s the wrong color. She stands over him and says something, but he can’t hear it. He whispers her name through dry, cracked lips. 

“My name is Sutra,” she laughs. “I’m not Soji. Don’t you remember?” 

He can’t process the words. Soji is here, and he loves her. Sutra must be her true name, he thinks. She loves him back. She moves away from him. He moves as much as he can in the straps to show her he’s okay. 

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Sutra says, coming back into his line of sight. She holds a scalpel. “You’ll be so useful in our research about organic life.”

He’s glad they picked Soji to torture him. He can cope with torture, he was trained by the Tal Shiar. 

What they do to him isn’t torture. It’s as if they don’t understand he’s organic, with organic needs. He’s never offered a bathroom or a shower, and he’s not released from the table while conscious. The table quickly becomes disgusting with fluids, but fortunately, most of it is his blood, which is the least embarrassing fluid to release when you’re being tortured. 

He screams Soji’s name when she cuts him, but his throat doesn’t work. He hasn’t had a drink in a long time. 

He loves her. He would let her cut him. 

He can’t die like this. He chooses to live. 

He would stay willingly if she asked. 

She’s killing him, and if he could speak, he would beg for her to finish the job faster. 

They don’t want information or secrets. Narek has no Zhat Vash secrets to share, anyway. He wonders if the destroyer has eliminated the Zhat Vash entirely from the universe, even his sister. 

He knows no one will come for him. Certainly not his sister. He is expendable. 

He begs her to kill him, and she cuts, and he drifts in and out of consciousness but remains alive, somehow. 

Time passes. 

Jean Luc Picard and Soji returned to the planet after months traveling and exploring. 

“It’ll be good to see everyone again,” Soji smiled wistfully. “I miss my home when I’m away.”

“Me too,” Picard agrees. “But I find that with people I care about, a home can be found anywhere.”

He smiles, and she playfully punches him in the shoulder. The ship lands, and Doctor Altan greets them. 

“It’s good to see you home again, Soji,” he smiles. 

“It’s good to see you too,”and she hugs him. 

Picard and Soji have rooms here where they stay when they’re on-world. Picard waves, heading for his favorite nature trail around the compound, and Soji walks into the labs to see if there’s anything interesting going on. 

Soji sees her sister, Sutra. She hasn’t seen her in months, not since Soji destroyed the beacon to prevent the higher synthetics from coming. Soji ducks behind a pillar. Sutra enters a lab room and stays inside for a long time. She emerges, pristine as ever, and walks away. 

Soji can’t help herself. She walks up to the door and scans herself in. The scan is more vigorous than in other rooms. She notices the door is soundproofed. 

The door opens. Soji walks in to find a half-conscious Narek, lying strapped to the center lab table. He’s plugged into a variety of IVs and other devices. His skin is covered in scars and fresh injuries. There’s a particular patch over his chest where she thinks she can see some of his rib bone through the cuts. The table is covered in fluid, mostly green blood, but some other stuff too she doesn’t want to think about. His eyes blink haphazardly when he sees her, and he gurgles. 

She runs out of the room. She wants to throw up. She needs to find Picard. 

Time runs together for Narek. He thinks he sees Soji, only it can’t be her, because she’s the right color, and she doesn’t hold a knife, and she runs out of the room. Before she leaves, he asks if she’s come to kill him at last. He promises he’ll welcome it. She doesn’t respond, she just leaves. He sighs and looks at the ceiling, unchanged since he arrived here so long ago. 

Soji comes back. She’s golden, and holds a knife. He smiles, because he’s happy to see her. He loves her. He forgets to ask if she’s killing him before she resumes her work. He thinks he screams. 

Narek wakes up in a different location, which is interesting. His arms and legs are free, but he can’t move them. Where he is now is dark and warm, finally the right temperature after so long in the cold. He can’t feel the IV in his arm anymore, but he can’t lift his head to check if it remains. He wonders where Soji is before falling asleep. 

“He’s been kept like that for far too long,” Picard mused. 

“I’d say,” the Emergency Medical Hologram continued, “that he’s been experimented on since you last saw him before the beacon was destroyed. Judging the time of some of these injuries—“

“Yes, thank you,” Picard said, cutting him off. “Will he...CAN he recover?”

“It’s too early to tell,” the EMH sighed before disappearing into the computer banks for an analysis.

Picard sat alone and wondered how this could have happened. 

Narek woke up in the same place. It was warm and dark and comfortable. Soji was sitting in the room. She wasn’t golden. She had no weapon. She just sat in a chair and looked at him. He lifted his head as much as he could to look around. It hurt too much, so he lowered it again. He closed his eyes. 

He heard movement, so he opened them again. Soji stood over him, holding a glass of water. “Would you like a drink?” She asked. 

He knew better than to respond. 

She held it to his lips. He almost didn’t drink, worried she could be poisoning him, but it really didn’t matter if that was the way she chose to dispatch him, right? So he drank. It was just water. 

She said something. He didn’t listen. He looked at the ceiling. He could feel his body starting to heal, and some of his brain power starting to come back. He didn’t want it to come back. If he was healthy again, it would just hurt all the more when she hurt him again. 

He licked his lips. She offered more water. He struggled to speak. 

It took a few tries to produce a sound. He didn’t have a lot of time before it would be too much effort. 

“What is it?” She leaned close. 

“...it’s...okay...” he gasped. “Kill...me...” He attempted a smile. 

He hoped she heard. He knew his voice was gone, raspy and broken and not at all the smooth charm she’d once liked him for. She didn’t respond, she just put the water glass down and left the room. He fell asleep. 

“I can’t do this, Picard,” Soji said, pacing. 

“I know—“

“It’s terrifying. It’s sickening, what she did to him.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t notice it sooner.”

“He asked me to kill him again today,” Soji said, sitting down. 

“Did you do it this time?” Picard smiled. 

She glared. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, touching her hand. “I didn’t mean it. How is he?”

“He thinks I’m her, Sutra. Or he thought she was me, I don’t know. He’s getting better at speaking.”

“We’ll just have to monitor him as best we can. Perhaps if we took him to a starfleet medical center?”

“He doesn’t even turn on the EMH,” Soji said, shuddering. “He said ‘kill me’ and the EMH didn’t pop up to ask what the psychiatric emergency was. How...I can’t...”

“I know,” Picard said, patting her shoulder. “We’ll help him.”

“I’m not sure we can,” Soji said, looking away. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three ppl commented asking me continue. thank u, here ya go

Narek woke up in the same place he’d fallen asleep. It was dark, and he was comfortable, but it was very cold. His legs didn’t respond when he tried to sit up. He was able to weakly wrap the blanket a little more tightly around himself, though. There was a blinking light nearby, and a man appeared out of thin air.

“Just lie back,” the man said. He looked familiar, but he was obviously a hologram, and Narek didn’t interact with holograms in the Tal Shiar. Clearly, Narek had not been rescued by his sister, as he had still hoped he might be. The man looked at some dials and a padd while Narek shivered in the covers. “The temperature…I’m so sorry, it must have returned to huamn default settings somehow,” the man muttered, adjusting something. Narek felt warm air begin to radiate from a ceiling vent and relaxed, just slightly.

“Can I have some water,” is what Narek meant to say. He made the attempt and coughed heavily, noticing as he did so that there was an IV plugged into his arm.

“Would you like some water?” The man asked. Narek nodded. The hologram went to a replicator and returned with a cup. Narek drank slowly, coughing every so often. It hurt to swallow.

“I…” Narek coughed again.

“Don’t try to talk just yet—“

“I have no information for you,” Narek coughed out, looking away. He tried to make eye contact with the security cameras in the dark corners of the room. “I… *cough* …am not Tal Shiar. My sister is, and I work for her.” He blinked slowly and deliberately, trying not to reveal any emotion. His right ear betrayed him and twitched nervously.

“We don’t want any information from you,” the hologram said softly, tucking another blanket around Narek. It was soft, and the weight was comforting. Almost suffocatingly comfortable.

Narek closed his eyes. He knew they didn’t want any information, otherwise Soji would have asked him during the torture. Narek could barely remember what he’d said or screamed when her golden fingers poked at him. This, at least, did not seem to be torture. Currently, he was not in pain, and that was acceptable.

“Try to get some sleep, okay? Is there anything you need?” the hologram hovered anxiously over the medical bed.

Narek shook his head “no.” The hologram disappeared, likely to make a report to its masters.

Narek knew what was happening. He was still the androids’ captive, but they had hurt him too deeply. He was still valuable as a test subject so long as he remained alive, so this “recovery” period was to ensure he would be strong enough for the next session. Narek kept his eyes closed and his body still, feigning sleep for the cameras. Everything was so clear, now. If he could just manage to commit suicide before they began torturing him again, everything would be all right. His sister and the Tal Shiar would know that he had honored their legacy by dying to protect their secrets.

Narek awoke to find a strange woman with Soji’s face in the medical bay with him. It wasn’t Soji, of course, because Soji had golden skin—was that right?—and carried a knife, and this woman had peach-colored skin, and seemed to be unarmed. But she wore Soji’s face. Narek attempted to sit up, and his legs failed him again. He settled for something resembling eye contact with the woman.

“Narek?” She asked.

“I am awake,” Narek said, only coughing a little bit. A drop or two of his blood hit the blankets. They both pretended not to notice.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

He stared at her. He didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t Soji, but she was his captor all the same.

“Can you talk?” she asked, and her voice came out a little more harshly, a little more firmly.

“Yes,” he said.

The door whooshed open with a hiss of cold air. An older human man entered. Narek recognized him as Picard, the Starfleet officer who was such close friends with the androids. Ah, so Starfleet had learned that Narek was here, and now they wanted to try interrogating him.

“Do you know who I am?” Picard asked.

Narek nodded.

“Can I get you something to eat? Anything,” Picard said, and his eyes turned down on the edges with pity.

Narek could hardly believe his luck. Surely, they wouldn’t be so stupid as to…but then again, Picard was a human, he would make mistakes. Narek nodded. “Chocolate-covered almonds,” he said, slowly. “Please,” he added, because he knew humans liked that word.

Picard went to the replicator while the not-Soji woman watched Narek, and none of them spoke. Narek felt his heart beat faster in his ribcage. He coughed blood onto the blanket again as Picard returned. He handed Narek a small bowl of chocolate-covered almonds.

Humans. Idiots, all of them. Did he really not realize he was offering Narek a bowl of poison? Narek grimaced. He could hardly believe humans could survive eating that stuff. He ate with his hands, swallowing the nuts whole as if they were pills. Just take enough of them, and this will all be over.

He finished the bowl and looked up. It wouldn’t be long. He coughed. “Ask me your questions.”

“How long were you a prisoner of the android Sutra?” Picard asked. Narek looked at the android standing behind him.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “Soji is my jailor.” He kept his face carefully neutral. His insides felt like they were on fire. He felt himself start to sweat.

“I’m afraid she wasn’t,” Picard said, looking back at the android with Soji’s face. It couldn’t be Soji, because Soji had golden skin. “We found you in Sutra’s lab. Soji has been with me since we last saw you.”

Narek blinked hazily. He didn’t understand what Picard was saying, and it didn’t matter, because Picard’s voice was getting quieter and quieter. Narek swayed and felt himself flop backwards into the far-too-comfortable bed.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency. OH MY—“

Narek noticed, as if from a distance, that the hologram reappeared, before everything started to go black. There were voices talking around him, but he couldn’t hear them, and didn’t care. There were hands on him, moving him, making him sit up, forcing his mouth open. Narek felt a tapping sensation on the back of his neck, and then his gag reflex trigged, and he was throwing up.

He kept his eyes closed. He should have known they wouldn’t let him die that easily. There were more retching sounds, coming from someone other than Narek. Didn’t matter. He hoped that they’d figured it out too late, and he fell unconscious.

The EMH held the limp Narek sitting weirdly on the edge of the bed, over the bucket he’d thrown up into. Picard held his other arm, trying to help, and Soji stood in the corner, looking the other way.

“I’m sorry, I…” she gagged again. “I’m a sympathetic puker, I can’t…” she held her hands over her mouth.

“Hold him upright so he doesn’t choke,” the EMH instructed. “I’ll get the Nalocan to stabilize him. What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Picard shifted his weight to hold the unconscious Romulan upright as the EMH ran around the room collecting materials.

“My sensors indicate he’s been poisoned,” the EMH raised an eyebrow.

“I gave him some food from the replicator,” Picard said. “He asked for chocolate covered almonds.”

“And you gave that to him?!?” The EMH returned with various hyposprays and began adjusting their dosage and applying them to Narek’s neck. “He’s a Romulan! You almost killed him!”

I didn’t realize,” Picard said, shifting Narek so the EMH had better access. “What can I do?”

“He should be okay once this takes effect,” the EMH said, administering one final hypospray. “Lay him back down on the bed.”

Picard did so, and the EMH pushed a button on the wall. Medical restraints appeared from under the mattress. “What are you doing?” Picard asked.

“This patient is now on suicide watch,” the EMH said, fastening the restraints. “I will be active at all times, and I recommend we get him to a Federation psychiatric ward equipped to help him as quickly as possible.”

“What ward would accept him?” Picard sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his forehead. “I’m not sure anywhere in the Federation is equipped to help him. We don’t even know what happened to him.”

“Would the Romulans?” the EMH asked.

“I’m not sure…perhaps,” Picard mused. “Soji? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

“I…don’t know what we should do,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on Narek. “But, suicide when captured by enemies is a standard Tal Shiar practice…maybe whatever Sutra did to him wasn’t that bad?”

“He seems to think he was captured by you,” Picard said.

“I know,” Soji said, looking up. “My guess is that he’s still confused from the…torture?…and can’t tell us apart.”

“If we reactivate Sutra, perhaps she could tell us what she did to him, and how to fix it,” Picard mused.

“I’d rather give him back to the Romulans,” Soji scoffed. “We’d never be able to force Sutra to talk to us, and once we reactivate her, she could escape, or sabotage something, or…I don’t even know.”

“Maybe that’s what we’ll do,” Picard said. “We’ll send a beacon over subspace asking the Tal Shiar to pick him up.”

“That’s a horrible plan,” Soji said.

“We don’t have a better one. And, if you’ll pardon my saying, he’s dying to get away from us.”

The EMH suppressed a chuckle at that.

“Let’s send a beacon,” Soji sighed. “Any change would have to be an improvement.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some notes: so its just Soji, Picard and the EMH on Rios's ship for my convenience. I attempt to explain it a little bit in this chapter, but basically Picard and Soji have Rios's ship and go on vacations together and just explore new worlds...seek out new civilizations... ha ha, anyway, you get it.
> 
> also, i'm making up romulan biology and culture, loosely basing it on vulcan canon (but altered bc they're different species, so chocolate makes vulcans drunk but kills romulans) and the little we get about romulans from the various shows. the three names thing? I love that shit. let's talk more about that. romulan flirting? who knows what THAT looks like, maybe in a chapter or two narek will be awake enough to try it.
> 
> canon? minor characters names? (sorry emh I do support hologram rights I just dont care enough to google your info at 2am) FRICK that shit we here for angst that doesn't apply to our own lives so we can feel something in quarantine, am I right?
> 
> hey its the first line in this chapter but im gonna spoil it anyway--his stomach doesn't hurt like hell, it hurts like Ganmadan bc we NERDS okay

Narek woke up. He was, unfortunately, not dead, but his stomach hurt like Ganmadan. His arms and legs were now restrained, so it seemed the androids had figured out what he’d attempted and made certain he would stay alive. Today, it was just the bald one in the room with him, Picard.

Narek blinked at Picard. He would still die before giving away his secrets.

Picard drank some tea from a cup he was holding. “Are you thirsty?” He asked.

Narek was incredibly thirsty. “No,” he lied.

“That’s all right. We’re taking care of you,” Picard said. It was meant to sound soft and comforting, but it drew Narek’s attention to the IV in his arm. Narek thrashed around, trying to rip it free, but the restraints held him down, and the IV stayed in place.

“How do you contact the Tal Shiar?” Picard asked. Narek snorted. Whatever drug cocktail they were pumping into him wasn’t strong enough to make him talk. Yet.

“You’re not going to talk to me?” Picard shrugged, taking a sip of his tea. Narek glared at him silently.

“You’ve been hurt,” Picard said. “We are going to try to contact the Tal Shiar to collect you. Is there any way we can get a secure message to someone who would come for you?”

Narek slumped in the restraints. This was the laziest interrogation he’d ever seen, but that was humans for you.

“We’re just trying to help,” Picard said. Narek pretended to fall asleep.

Picard left the medical bay and joined Soji for lunch. “I will be honest, I wish I knew what to do with him,” Picard sighed.

“We could throw him out an airlock,” Soji suggested.

“Soji, that man has been hurt, badly, and we have a responsibility to do something about it.”

“Yeah, I guess you do,” she sighed. “I wish I wasn’t here for it. Narek lied to me, betrayed me…he made me think he actually cared about me, and then he tried to kill me.”

“So you’d like to kill him?”

“I’d like to never think about him again,” Soji said, setting her cutlery down a little bit too firmly, “but here he is.”

“It is nice to have someone else on board, though,” Picard said, sipping his tea.

“Yeah. It really was something, with Rios and Elnor and Raffi around,” Soji said. “I guess traveling aimlessly through the galaxy isn’t for everyone, though.”

“You should talk to him,” Picard said. “Get some of that anger off your chest.”

“I’m not going to yell at a half-conscious suicidal Romulan spy.”

“I’m not saying yell,” Picard held up his hands. “I’m just saying…if it would help you to move on, it doesn’t exactly seem as if he’ll remember much of his time with us.”

Soji set up a Romulan distress beacon from the bridge and thought about what Picard said. She read some of her book, she re-wired some of the ship’s backup systems, and she ate dinner. Eventually, she did decide to go visit Narek.

She walked into the medical bay and he saw her immediately. He tried to sit up, but he was still being restrained, under the EMH’s orders. He seemed stronger than he had before; every day away from Sutra, his injuries healed a little bit more.

“I don’t forgive you for lying to me,” Soji said, trying to stare him down. His hair was disheveled. There was still some dried green blood on the sheets. His eyes were red and bloodshot. She couldn’t hold his gaze.

“I’ve no more blood to give you as penance,” Narek said, and his voice was almost the same as it had been back on the Artifact, when he’d whispered to her alone in her quarters.

“There’s nothing you could do to make me forgive you,” Soji hissed. “I cared about you, I actually did, and you manipulated me!”

“Talk to Soji, she’s suffered far more than you, android,” Narek said, looking away.

“Narek.” Soji stared at the Romulan, who didn’t turn his head back towards her. “Narek,” she walked around the bedside so she could see his face, “I’m Soji. Don’t you recognize me?”

“You have her face,” Narek said, finally making eye contact, “but Soji is golden and carries a knife. She cuts me so that I can atone for what I did to her.”

“That was Sutra,” Soji said. She almost reached out to tuck a lock of Narek’s messy hair behind his ear, but she pulled back. “The golden skinned android who tortured you…that was Sutra, not me.” She didn’t even know why she felt the need to explain that to a half-conscious totally-not-lucid Romulan spy.

“You are not Soji,” Narek said, staring into the middle distance. “Soji knows my name.”

“Narek?” Soji waved her hand in front of his face. No response. She sighed. “Hrai Yan?” She asked tentatively. There was no way he’d told her the truth—

He looked up. “Soji,” he said, and his eyes glinted with just a hint of recognition. “Then, the golden one—“

“Sutra. Not me,” Soji said, stepping away from the bed to sit down. She was uncomfortable with his sudden alertness.

“Soji,” Narek said, and his voice went soft. “I am so sorry. I can’t even begin to apologize—“

“You can’t, I just said you can’t!” Soji hoped she wasn’t yelling. “You can’t be sorry enough to make up for what you did to me!”

“I—“ Narek seemed as if he was going to continue his apology monologue, if not for the fact that he started coughing, and as his arms were still restrained, he flopped around uselessly in the bed.

“I don’t even feel better telling you that,” Soji said, rubbing her forehead. “Picard was wrong, this was a bad idea—“

Narek began speaking in Romulan, and the universal translator made a glitching sound before it remarked only that Narek was quoting a poem. It attempted a translation, and in a bland, feminine voice, these words filled the med bay:

**Soulmate.**

**You possess my true name.**

**You are the owner of that which I am.**

**Ask me to destroy myself for you;**

**it is done.**

“You can’t… actually believe that I am your soulmate,” Soji said.

Narek coughed a few more times and looked up at her. “I gave myself to you when I gave you my true name. It does not matter what you feel for me. I am already yours.”

It would have been more romantic if not for the fact that it was immediately followed by Narek involuntarily throwing up on the floor. The EMH appeared as Soji ran from the room covering her mouth.

“You might need a different medication,” the hologram said, adjusting some dials. “I’m sorry, I’ve never treated a Romulan before. I’m still calibrating.”

“Does Soji want me to remain alive?” Narek asked.

“I…” the EMH looked up. “This is the closest you’ve been to ‘awake’ in days. How are you feeling?”

“Does. Soji. Want me. To remain alive?” Narek asked, his voice dangerously low.

“I don’t know, we haven’t discussed it—“ the EMH started. Narek thrashed around wildly in the restraints until the EMH finally introduced a sedative into the IV to calm him down. Soon enough, Narek was unconscious again. “Oh dear,” the EMH said. He tapped a panel on the wall. “EMH to crew. We’ll need to discuss the patient’s condition tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://mrklingo.freeshell.org/romulan/engtorihan.html
> 
> using the above source, I have attempted to translate the name hrai yan into english   
> hra- (prefix form of the adjective "another, other")  
> hraikhina (victory, winning)  
> hrian (you)  
> yana (count, include)  
> yaekh (ruthless)  
> ya (armed, like with a weapon)
> 
> so I am loosely translating narek's true soulmate name, hrai yan, as meaning something like "I am included among your possessions, you are armed with me as your weapon" because I can, ha ha

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos keep me going kiddos
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/cQBj17/


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